Sponsors have become supportive of digital events: Sanjoy K Roy, Managing Director, Teamwork Arts

Today, with all in-person events facing challenges and limitations, digital events are gaining unprecedented traction. For most brands, digital events have become a key element of their renewed marketing strategies.

Before the pandemic brands used to look at activations and events as a part of investing in a longer-term strategy to build a community that would ultimately lead to word-of-mouth marketing, new customer recommendations, and repeat purchases. 

The pandemic scenario has led to a massive shift in most brands’ event marketing strategies. Sharing his experience of how brands response has changed during these times, Sanjoy K Roy, Managing Director, Teamwork Arts says “It is so strange that even last year when our colleagues used to go out to market for sponsors and supporters and we used to pitch our digital figures of some of our Facebook sessions, brands were never really interested in that aspect at all. It didn’t matter whether you have 1 million views or 5 million views you are not getting 1 rupee extra from brands for that.”

Roy further mentions that today it is completely changed because most brands have a protocol and if there is something on the ground they will not be supportive of it because it has a possibility of becoming a super spreader event.

Now brands have shifted their focus on what are the event agencies doing digitally and what they can access. For event agencies the challenge is that how do they create a memory and make it different from say a brand advertising on Facebook, Google or Twitter. Why will that make a difference for any brand that is supporting a particular event? And what is the cost benefit ratio to that and therefore what are the value attributed.

According to Roy, “Right now we are seeing that the value attributes from on ground to a digital event is differential having 10% of what it used to be. So where we would charge say a 100 rupees is now covalent to just 8 to 10 rupees for the same kind of delivery. And that I think it is a big challenge for not just us but every digital player like Amazon and Flipkart too.”

The big question remains the same- how does the industry face this challenge? This is because the sense is that digital doesn’t have a cost and it is cheap. An event can be easily recorded on Zoom and then broadcasted.  

Sharing his plans about Jaipur Literature Festival 2021, Roy adds “The infrastructure has changed but nothing else changes so for the Jaipur Literature Festival 2021, we are trying to create an on-ground event that we will shoot for broadcast and make it a digital event keeping in mind the Covid-19 protocol. In fact, we may not have any audience because we want to get out of the zoom format into a more environmental format of creating a memory, an experience and space.”